Ḥayim Tchernowitz

Born in the town of Sebezh, Vitebsk guberniia, Russian Empire (today in Belarus), Chaim (Ḥayim) Tchernowitz received a traditional education, earning his rabbinical ordination in 1896 from the yeshiva of Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor in Kovno. Moving to Odessa, Tchernowitz founded a teacher’s seminary—in later years it became a modern-style rabbinic seminary—which eventually counted among its teachers prominent figures in the development of modern Hebrew culture, including Joseph Klausner and Chaim Nahman Bialik. Tchernowitz attained his doctorate from the University of Würzburg in Germany in 1914, and in 1923, he immigrated to the United States, accepting a position at the Jewish Institute of Religion (now Hebrew Union College) in New York City. Often publishing under the pseudonym Rav Tsa‘ir, Tchernowitz contributed to scholarly and journalistic periodicals, both in Hebrew and in Yiddish. His scholarly work dealt with the history of halakhah and modern curricula for teaching Talmud, and his journalism advocated Zionist positions on Jewish social and political questions. Tchernowitz continued publishing well into the 1940s. He died in New York City.